Moving Ahead

It's been 7 months since I handed in my ordination papers. I've been waiting for the regret, the anguish, the doubt. It hasn't come.

I live across the street from the Baptist parsonage. I had a very collegial relationship with the last Baptist pastor. He was here for 6 years. He's a good guy. A little strange, I always ran into him in the Hastings bookstore. He was always looking at the comic books-- my daughter got locked out of our house one day and his wife brought her to their house and she told me his office at home was filled with comic book characters. We worked together on several occasions when I was a pastor, and we got along well. He was always very funny. He was a good pastor, he loved his people and visited them faithfully.

His parsonage is empty now, and I can't help but think, "another one bites the dust." He didn't leave the ministry. He was voted out by his parishioners (Bapstists can do that, Methodists are stuck and their only option is to torture the pastor they don't like until the Bishop has mercy and moves them). He's now serving a tiny church down in Kansas somewhere, but I think he'll be ok. He likes the small church, the intimacy of small community. But there was a sadness, a weariness to his posture when we last spoke in my kitchen.

I don't miss the pastorate. Getting out and looking back I remember more and more of the abuse that I put up with in many churches. I remember having my self-esteem pounded regularly by petty criticisms, impossible demands, childish fights between parishioners and the ever-present battle for control. I can't believe I lasted as long as I did. But the Church structure also made us believe that no one else would want us anyway, so we really had no choice. They beat us down into submission, sucked out any self-esteem we might have left, constantly reminded us that we were the cause of the Church's overall decline, and then of course reminded us that they owned us forever.

No, I don't miss it.

I do miss some of the people. I'm already starting to hear about former parishioners who passed away, and I felt that grief at not being able to be there for them. I trust that someone else was, however. I don't miss teaching confirmation to students that I'd never seen in church and would never see again, but whose parents insisted they had to get "done." I don't miss conducting weddings with people who didn't know how to respect the church and who sometimes came to rehearsals slightly inebriated, or whose wedding party had a six-pack out in the parking lot. But they had to have a church wedding because, well, it's what you do. Like baptize your baby or confirm your 12 year old, even if you have no intention of being a part of the church.

I don't miss having to lie. Like every year at the Clergy Session when we have to go through the John Wesley questions (from the 19th century) again that we answered at our ordination. "Are you in debt as to embarrass yourself in your work?" Of course, most of us were, but we were supposed to lie.

"No."

"Do you expect to reach perfection in love in this life." (Uh, no.)

"Yes."

These days I feel like I'm in recovery. I feel like I'm striving to get my dignity, self-worth, and relationship to God back. I feel like someone that crawled out of a car wreck and is still somewhat tramatized, still nervous riding in a car. I gave everything I could to my calling, I gave so much of myself, and in the end it felt like the Church gave me a good hard punch in the mouth and threw me out the front door. "Go in peace."

I've had to remind myself that the Church is not God. The Bishop certainly is not God. I am a child of God, beloved, cherished, embraced by the loving, gentle spirit of God. All that the Church said in the end is not the final word on me or my value. God is bigger than the Church. For so long, of course, the Church was the mouthpiece of God for me in my life. But that can't be true anymore. It's like continuing to allow an abusive parent be the mouthpiece of God or of Love in you life. The Church has lost that privilege in my life.

My relationship with God is alive, healing, growing, changing, expanding-- and in a way it has become too large for the confines of the Church. In my work now I get to deal with real people with incredible honesty, trust, and finally hope that we share with each other. We couldn't be truly honest in the Church. We brought only our best selves to church because our dark secrets, our hurts, our doubts, our rages, our struggles were too dirty for the Church. We didn't trust each other there. Death seems to bring out incredible honesty in people, and I must say it's refreshing. There is no longer any reason to hide anything when you face death; your own or that of your loved one. There is mercy, there is grace, and in the midst of us, there is God, holding us all.

I wouldn't go back for anything. It's time to move forward.